Frederick M. Dolan has concentrated on the concept of art, the meaning of life, political and moral philosophy, technology, and the public versus the social spheres. He is a strong believer in liberal education and the study of the great brooks of the Western canon, but he also has an abiding interest in the religion, art, and literature of India, China, and Japan (only in translation, sadly). Among the might dead thinkers he’s found especially compelling include Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Pascal, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Arendt. His 1994 book Allegories of America was recently chosen for inclusion in the Humanities Open Books Program (jointly sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), which will make an e-book version of it discoverable on the open web and freely available to a global audience. He is Professor Emeritus, Rhetoric Department, University of California-Berkeley.